It was the absence of performing animals that defined it in the 1980s, but contemporary circus has come a long way since. Cirque Éloize, a smallish touring company which started in Montreal in the late 90s, has so effectively dissolved the boundaries between dance, acrobatics and theatre that it performs around the world under any or all of those banners. Its current tour to UK theatres offers urban attitude, breakdance and hip hop along with aerial skills, trampolining and trick cycling – often hair-raisingly at the same time. Perhaps it was inevitable. Street dance and acrobatics share a common spirit – a sense of risk, obviously, but also a drive for individuality firmly embedded within a sense of community. It’s the collective energy of iD-Reloaded that makes it fly.
And it almost didn’t happen. Creator-director Jeannot Painchaud had planned to bring a different production but when a flood at the company’s Montreal warehouse destroyed the sets he had to think again. iD-Reloaded builds on the framework of the 2009 show iD, updated with state-of-the-art projections and some new choreography. The result is a generously programmed, seamless, sometimes verging on chaotic celebration of physical skill and daring whose energy doesn’t let up.
Everyone has their favourite circus discipline, and no doubt a least favourite, too. Some love the bendy kinetic sculpture of contortionism, while others (myself included) find it slightly creepy, preferring the solid show of bulky male strength required by the Chinese pole. I also find myself oddly immune to the more floaty aerial acts, while seeing exactly what it is that others find beautiful and inspiring. But give me a juggler keeping seven balls in the air and I’m entranced. Ditto two giant skipping ropes, twirled a split second apart, through which performers dive by judging the tiny gaps. B-boying while skipping deserves to become a thing. And why not jumping rope while mounted on a bike? It’s all here.
Suffice to say that there is something for every taste, the pace kept brisk by stylish linking interludes of mainly wordless theatre that often involve the whole crew. It’s here that director Painchaud shows his chops. One such interlude turns the scaffold set into a wall of silhouetted figures in lighted windows, like that long shot in Hitchcock’s Rear Window. The scene is magically assembled and dispersed within two minutes. A thrilling trampoline act fills the entire stage with busyness even though only three men are actually bouncing. The opening segment, also memorable, evokes a Montreal cityscape, huddled commuters hurrying by. We almost feel the Canadian cold and wet. But the scene swiftly morphs into something of a West Side Story rumble, with colourful b-boys and b-girls in place of Sharks and Jets, while the soundtrack blasts Québecois rap at wall-shaking volume. This is not a show for wimps.
Try telling a friend about the latest circus show from Montreal and they’ll think you mean the monster empire whose seat prices at the Royal Albert Hall start at £360. A mid-price seat at Cirque Éloize on its current tour is a tenth of that. It's more family-friendly on every level.
